March 1, 2006
When microprocessor core developer ARM started in a barn outside Cambridge, England, just over fifteen years ago, odds were against it making a global impact. The team of “12 engineers and me”, as then CEO and now chairman Sir Robin Saxby puts it, “had no patents, a working prototype and £1.75m of cash.” Without the […]
March 1, 2006
Selecting the proper ADC can appear a formidable task. A direct approach is to go to the selection guides and parametric search engines. Enter the sampling rate, resolution, power supply voltage, and other properties. Click ‘find’. But can one approach the task with greater understanding — particularly of the main architectures — and get better […]
March 1, 2006
For peripheral card and system manufacturers, delivering low-latency high-performance computing solutions at affordable prices has been an insurmountable barrier. Although processor speeds and bandwidth have taken quantum leaps over the last decade, the last few inches between the adapter slot and system CPU represent a bottleneck that restricts the development of cost-effective high-performance computing solutions. […]
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March 1, 2006
More phlegmatic reactions to January’s Consumer Electronics Show were that it was “just like last year, only more so.” And, indeed, the big headlines went once more, to the companies that could claim bragging rights for 100-inch plus plasma screens; to Microsoft and Intel in their aggressive determination to force themselves beyond the PC and […]
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March 1, 2006
For years, ASIC and FPGA designers have shared the goal of having totally reusable intellectual property (IP) blocks. This goal has been partially fulfilled, with the introduction of high-level hardware description languages such as VHDL and Verilog, and powerful Register Transfer Level (RTL) synthesis tools in the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, with a […]
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December 1, 2005
Introduction Considerable effort is being exerted to improve the quality and success of system-on-chip (SoC) designs. Given the demand for more and more features, lower power requirements, and need for blazing speeds to handle increasing data for video and other hungry applications, it is no surprise that complex SoCs are becoming harder to verify. A […]
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December 1, 2005
Introduction A synthesized eye diagram begins with an accurate TDT measurement of a linear device. The validity of this approach has been proven across a number of case studies and is now commonly accepted in the communication industry. The measurement allows the device’s eye response to be accurately generated by an advanced synthesis algorithm such […]
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December 1, 2005
We end the year with an issue of EDA Tech Forum that places perhaps more emphasis on design for manufacture than any before it, with opinions from Gartner Dataquest, Mentor Graphics and Applied Materials. These give readers a chance to view this often controversial and misunderstood area from three different but important perspectives: those of […]
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December 1, 2005
The IEEE Council for EDA has opened its website at www.c-eda.org. Earlier this fall, the IEEE Council for Electronic Design Automation (CEDA) took on formal existence with the election of its first officers. Design consultant and one time DAC general chair Alfred Dunlop is its launch president. He sets out why this is a great […]
December 1, 2005
Introduction Selecting the proper ADC can appear a formidable task, considering the thousands on the market. A direct approach is to go to the selection guides and parametric search engines. Enter the sampling rate, resolution, power supply voltage, and other properties. Click ‘find’. And hope for the best. But it’s usually not enough. How does […]